Friedo W. Dekker is a professor of Clinical Epidemiology. His main teaching is related to scientific training and engagement in research, and he is program leader and co-chair of a research group on medical education. His clinical research is mainly related to patients with chronic kidney disease, in particular regarding etiology, prognosis, and patient reported outcome measures (PROMs).

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Friedo W. Dekker is a professor of Clinical Epidemiology. His main teaching is related to scientific training and engagement in research, and he is program leader and co-chair of a research group on medical education. His clinical research is mainly related to patients with chronic kidney disease, in particular regarding etiology, prognosis, and patient reported outcome measures (PROMs).

Scientific training and engagement

All medical doctors should be competent in using research to keep up with developments in their clinical specialism, and to make appropriate clinical decisions (evidence based medicine). To that end, students have to learn to find relevant information, and to critically appraise the research papers they have found. Being engaged in small research projects is an important element in active learning. The LUMC is the only place in The Netherlands where all medical students design and perform their own small-scale research project already during the first year of medicine.

In addition, medicine needs also medical doctors doing research to contribute to the progress of medical science. To this end, an extensive honours program has been developed for medical students with special talents and ambition. Already during their bachelor of medicine students are encouraged to participate in extracurricular courses and real research projects, either in the lab or in the clinic. Clinical epidemiology, with a focus on clinical research methods, is one of the main departments to educate students in doing clinical research. This department has a research focus on several clinical areas among which nephrology and offers students examples and inspiration to become engaged in clinical research.

Academic career

Friedo W. Dekker studied medicine at Leiden University where he also defended his PhD-thesis titled ‘Asthma and COPD in general practice – studies on the quality of care’ in 1993. In 1994 he started at the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam at the department Clinical epidemiology and biostatistics where he got involved in research in patients with chronic kidney disease treated with dialysis. In 2000 he moved to the department of Clinical Epidemiology at the LUMC and expanded his clinical research in nephrology. Here, he became a full professor in 2010. The title of his inaugural lecture was ‘Room for talent’, on scientific training and engagement in research for medical students. With his research group he has published over 500 research papers with an H-index > 80 (Web of Science). Among these are several series of educational papers in nephrology journals explaining epidemiological research methods. Since 2016 he is also program leader and co-chair of a research group on medical education at the Center for Innovation in Medical Education, LUMC.

During his career he has always been active in teaching research methods and epidemiology, starting with residents in general practice and student research projects, then with students in medical information sciences and PhD students, and now with medical students, PhD students, and residents and specialists in various specialties. Doing this, he developed several new programs of active learning on which he also published and for which he received the professor G.J. Tammeling award.

Dekker was one of the editors of the journal Nephrology, Dialysis and Transplantation, member of the scientific board of the Dutch Kidney Foundation, and member of the board of the Netherlands Federation Nephrology. He was also president of the Netherlands Epidemiological Society, and active in the Netherlands Association for Medical Education (NVMO). He was chairman of the visitation committee for the Bachelor and Master programs in Medicine in Flanders, Belgium, and later for the training programs in epidemiology in The Netherlands and Flanders.

Activities